Accessibility Database for Record Management Systems
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing record management systems face inefficiencies in determining accessibility to electronic records within organizations, leading to slow query response times due to the complexity of managing explicit and implicit access permissions across multiple databases.
Innovation Solution
A record management system generates an accessibility database by combining explicit and membership databases through matrix multiplication, creating a direct mapping of records to members, allowing quick determination of accessible records and enhancing computational efficiency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the system uses multiple databases to manage explicit and implicit access permissions, then access control reliability is improved, but query response time deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-computes and stores accessibility information in an accessibility database before queries are executed. This preliminary action creates a ready-to-use mapping between members and accessible records, eliminating the need for complex real-time calculations during queries, thus resolving the contradiction between reliable access control and fast response time
Solution Approach 2:
The accessibility database acts as an intermediary structure that bridges the explicit database and membership database. Instead of directly querying multiple databases during access determination, the system uses this pre-computed accessibility database as a mediator to quickly retrieve accessibility information, maintaining reliability while improving speed
2Loss of information
If the system queries all accessible records to ensure complete search results, then search completeness is improved, but computational resource usage worsens
Solution Approach 1:
The accessibility database is pre-computed to contain all accessible records for each member before search queries are executed. This preliminary action allows the system to quickly filter and return complete search results without performing computationally intensive accessibility checks during each query, thus maintaining search completeness while reducing computational resource usage
Data Source
AI summary
A record management system stores records for an organization having a plurality of members and a plurality of groups, and manages accessibility of the records for the organization according to a specified record access policy. The record management system generates an accessibility database that indicates, for each member, records that are explicitly or implicitly accessible by each member such that the records accessible for each member can be quickly determined if needed. A member has explicit access to a record if there is an explicit indication of accessibility between the member and the record. A member has implicit access to a record through membership associations to other members or groups that have access to the record. The record management system also receives search queries from members and returns records that are relevant and accessible to the members based on the accessibility database.